I am your typical housewife living in high maintenance suburbia. I have a handsome husband, 2 kids and a flock of pet chickens. I try and feed my family with $100 a month. With the help of coupons, gardening and bartering I am able to squeeze the most out of our grocery budget and still manage to have a little fun along the way.

Monthly Meal Planning and Grocery Shopping Trips – Week 20 of 52

We seem to be eating a lot of crab cakes lately since discovering them at one of the local bakeries/eateries in town. I’m not really into seafood, but there is something especially delicious about these little crabby cakes and I LOVE them. The dill sauce is crazy good and at $4.75 a pop, we’d much rather buy them and support a local business than to hunt down some fresh crab and make our own.

Eggs with hoisin sauce a little chicken weenies from Costco seem to be my new go-to breakfast. Well that, and Cream of Wheat. {No Malt O Meal to be found here in Maine}.

My husband thinks eating raspberry and cream cheese pastries after a 6 mile walk defeats the purpose of the walk. I totally disagree.

When you are to tired to make tortillas and you’re out of tomatoes and there’s no lettuce in sight, and you forgot about the sour cream and guacamole in the fridge. I think I might be one of those people who eat to live, not live to eat. Fuel up and get back to work, that’s my motto. 😉

It’s a sad day when you run out of pickled beets. Next time I’ll buy a case.

It was a good week and there were a lot of meals on the fly because seriously, who has time to stay cooped up inside when the weather is nice out and playing in the dirt is so much more fun than spending 30-45 minutes inside preparing a meal.

Ice cream season has officially begun, and I couldn’t be happier. 🙂 🙂 🙂

Are quick meals and ice cream making a comeback at your house? What are you eating these days? Curious minds want to know.

Peace Out Girl Scouts,

~Mavis

Total Spent This Past Week on Groceries, Bakery Treats We Brought Home $14.25

Total Spent in May on Groceries and Bakery Treats $59.61

Total Spent in April on Groceries and Bakery Treats $1083.55 WOWZA

Total Spent in March on Groceries and Bakery Treats $446.03 {includes a $50 gift card}

Total Spent in February on Groceries and Bakery Treats $416.98 {the fridge and freezer are packed!}

We’ve been eating like normal. We make meals that will last for two meals. Just cooking every other day. Crockpot meals. Beef tips and gravy, pulled pork, roast with vegetables. Things like that. I’ve also used my Instant Pot. We love “Encore” meals. AKA leftovers. We do snack on popcorn almost daily.

Many items (meat, pasta, etc.) are heavily limited at our local stores, so our meals are actually taking longer as I make more things like pasta from scratch. We could shop more frequently to deal with the item limits, but I don’t want to do that, so I’ve just been working around what we don’t have. We did buy some local meat to freeze, but we’re mostly leaning on vegetarian meals (tomato soup and cheddar biscuits, sesame noodles with chickpeas and veggies, etc.) to avoid running through it too quickly.

I’ve really been in the mood to make ice cream, but it’s gotten cool and rainy again and will be for the next 5 days, so maybe not. I usually use our ice cream machine, but I think I might try a no-churn version I found in order to use less milk. I guess I could make and freeze it now for when it finally warms up again.

Our mainstream national box grocery stores have limits on everything, so I have been shopping at the small mom and pop grocery stores and Co-op since they do not have limits on staples. The prices aren’t that much different and I have to deal with less people and crowds. Our chain grocery stores were limiting everything from eggs to cereal to canned goods and meat. It was so stressful and annoying when they told me I could only get 1dz eggs when I had 2 in my cart at checkout and I could only get 3 boxes of cereal, my kids will plow through a box in a day easily. Our CSA starts pickups in 2 weeks! I cannot wait!

Yes, we have CSA delivery and can buy meat occasionally at a family farm, so we are very lucky, but we actually only have big box stores to choose from for other groceries. We have one or two specialty markets that are mom and pop operations, but they don’t really carry groceries. We also have chickens for eggs but are actually giving most of the eggs away to try to help friends. The limits wouldn’t be as much of an issue if we shopped every week, but my husband still has to go into work right now, so we’re trying to minimize other trips.

I like that you are supporting your local shops! We were out yesterday and saw hat our favorite seafood restaurant is back open so we plan to go tonight. We want to support them and keep them going. We have been eating there for 26 years!

Are those pumpkin seeds on your salads? I love them. But I toast mine in a dry pan on the stove (just put in a dry pan, and shake every once in a while till they are brown. Be careful, they can burn very quickly). Oh my gosh, brings them to a whole new level!